Looking Before You Leap

The big news today is that the Bush administration launched a parting shot at the Endangered Species Act, eliminating the requirement that government agencies obtain a review documenting what effects their projects might have on endangered species. The embarrassingly Ministry of Truth explanation given by the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service was that the rule change “really says to the agencies, ‘This law belongs to all of us. You’re responsible to defend it.'” The only problem is, most government agencies have no wildlife biologists on staff so wouldn’t be able to conduct any meaningful internal review of their proposed projects’ effects.

The rule is open for a 30-day comment period; I hope you’ll comment—I’m too disgusted to find anything to say here.

Instead, I’ll talk about a report in the New York Times about geoengineers—scientists proposing technological solutions to climate change—beginning to discuss the ethics of their work. I’ve been concerned for some time about some of the invasive, short-sighted solutions proposed, which include using artillery to shoot (acid rain-making) sulfate into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight, positioning 20 million tons of reflectors between Earth and the sun, and “seeding” the seas with iron to generate more carbon-consuming plankton.

Several people objected when I published the linked piece that the ocean-“seeding” being pursued by the company Planktos was credible. But the U.N. later asked for a moratorium on it.

Am I a genius? Not at all. The basis for my discomfort was the simple, well proven axiom that ecosystems are complicated enough that engineering a major change in one will almost certainly have unintended, difficult-to-remedy consequences.

Some ideas are better than others, sure. But even if a techno solution worked with few unintended environmental effects, if it were our main line of attack against climate change (instead of, you know, renewables and reduced consumption), we would therefore rely indefinitely on the company providing the technology and the governments allowing it to be implemented. And companies, and even governments, don’t last as long as planets.

Additionally, mechanisms that would affect the entire planet need more public disclosure and discussion than publication- and patent-driven scientists are used to. So some scientists are beginning to push for formal discussions of the unique ethics of this field, like the meetings the nascent biotech industry undertook in the 70s.